The Collapse of the Republican Model

Dec 21, 2012 3:32 pm ET

We’re all talking about the cratering of the Republican party. Actually a number of us are talking about the long-term collapse of the Republican model within American politics, and ways the party might revive itself. Here’s James Kurth with a smart, sobering look at what he sees not as the collapse of the party but of modern conservatism itself.

He is right about the policy dominance of “Wall Street”, and the need for the party to kick away from policies that have left it looking like the handmaiden of the economic elite. In the foreign policy section, something should be added to his references to the Cold War, something that has been largely lost to history. Americans for half a century opposed the Soviet Union and stood in support of US efforts in the Cold War for many reasons — the Soviets were totalitarian, a dictatorship, and dangerous. But one of the biggest reasons Americans resisted the Soviet Union, and made sacrifices to oppose it, was that the Soviet Union was atheistic — and expansionist.

Americans saw that wherever the Soviets went they oppressed the church and the religious. And Americans were a church going people. They saw religion as foundational not only to their own country but to freedom itself. That is why their opposition to the Soviet Union was so visceral, committed, and long lasting. Academics and intellectuals always leave this part out, or forget it. But it was central to the Cold War. Anyway, those members of Congress who read — this is not said sarcastically — would find Kurth’s piece very much worth their while.